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My letter to the Next Microsoft CEO (BusinessWeek)

BusinessWeek asked me to use my experience at WordPress.com to offer advice to the future CEO of Microsoft:

Recently, I spoke with 300 smart and passionate Microsoft (MSFT) employees. Are you as open to change as they are? If yes, read on. I was invited to your company because of my book, The Year Without Pants, which tells my story as a former Microsoft manager who worked for a year at the eighth most popular website in the U.S.: WordPress.com, which is more popular than any Microsoft website, including Bing. These two companies are very different, yet one is on the rise and one is not. As a unique traveler between both cultures, here’s my advice:

Read the full article here / read it as one page.

It was a hard article to write, given how much history I have with the company. They asked me to take an angle that focused on WordPress.com, which forced me to leave out many stories and insights that came simply from working there for a decade and seeing what’s happened since I left. If anyone’s interested, happy to share more thoughts, just ask.